The Sun’s Bosom

In response to:

In his illuminating review of Ronald Steel’s biography of Walter Lippmann [NYR, October 9] Anthony Lewis makes an arresting comparison of Lippmann and Louis D. Brandeis: although they were alike in certain aspects of outlook and temperament, the journalist’s writing lacked the passion and commitment of the Justice’s. The aptness of the comparison is borne out by Brandeis’s own opinion of Lippmann. Writing to Felix Frankfurter in 1925, after the appearance of The Phantom Public, Brandeis delivered a characteristically incisive judgment: “…I think it is a remarkable book with the classic quality in thought and expression. The defects are the inevitable ones due to his qualities and lacks which we have often discussed. ‘Den der Sonne Busen ist liebeleer.’ [‘For the sun’s bosom is without love.’]” (Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, M. Urofsky and D. Levy, eds., V: 191).